Giving young children the pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar has had a significant impact on pneumococcal diseases, such as pneumonia and middle ear infections, researchers report.

To investigate the impact of immunization, Dr. Katherine A. Poehling and colleagues examined the annual rates of pneumococcal and other diseases in New York and in Tennessee before and after the introduction of Prevnar in 2000.

“We found one fewer visit for ear infections per 10 children, and two to three fewer visits for pneumonia per 100 children younger than two years of age,” Poehling, of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, Nashville, Tennessee, told AMN Health.

As reported in the medical journal Pediatrics, they calculated expected disease rates and compared these with observed disease rates for children under the age of 2 in each year after Prevnar became available.

Between 2001 and 2002, there were 20 fewer outpatient visits in Tennessee for pneumonia and invasive disease and 33 fewer in New York per 1000 subjects. The corresponding declines for ear infection-related visits were 118 and 430.

The researchers call for further studies to confirm these findings, but Poehling said that “fewer visits for ear infections and pneumonia should translate into less health care expenditure for common childhood illnesses.”

SOURCE: Pediatrics, September 2004.